pills, learning to swallow

I don't see the difficulty here. Children can swallow pills without much difficulty, as long as you don't want them to. Just ask the poison center!

But seriously, it certainly is nice when children finally gain the ability to take a pill. No more complaints about taste, dosing is more accurate and easy, and the price is usually less. But children start off with a real mental block about swallowing medicine in pill form.

Get a bag of "Red Hots" or a box of "Nerds," and a bag of plain M&M's (or Good-N-Plenty's - the size of the average capsule). Give your child a glass of water, put a Red Hot in his palm, and tell him to figure out how to swallow it whole. When he can do that easily, advance to M&M's or Good-N-Plenty's. You can suggest popping the candy into a mouth that already contains some water, or putting the candy on the tongue and washing it down. Once he can do that, he can take any pill, and quickly will get over any psychological resistance to a small capsule.

You don't even have to do this all in one sitting. A couple of brief practice sessions will desensitize the irrational reaction to pills and you can be proud of your child's new very handy ability.

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